Archive for March, 2009
Am waaaaay behind on catching up with the online politics-specific sites, but here are a few stories that stood out over the past few weeks.
- Update: When an Obama email matters more than an Obama TV ad in the Murphy/Tedisco race, plus the new GOP online video against Murphy that invokes 9/11 and Osama bin Laden.
- Update: Online activism targets Notre Dame, Vatican over Obama commencement address.
- Update: Bloggers, MoveOn v. Senate.
- Update: Liberal commenters on conservative blogs threaten humanity — bring in the trolls! (Has this guy ever read a website before?).
- Even online, politics is a rich man’s game.
- Obama’s Interactive Town Hall Meeting and Obama’s gimmicky online chat session actually worked, the aftermath of White House Announces It’s ‘Open for Questions’.
- The List: Look Who’s Censoring the Internet Now.
- Reading list: How Obama Won.
- GSA signs deals for agencies to use social networking sites.
- Practicing Politics in the Twitter Era + Using #TCOT vs. No Hashtags Whatsoever.
- Introducing Hill Tweet News.
- Working to pass budget, Obama seeks help from grassroots, plus The “Mandate Incarnate”: President Obama’s Grassroots Advocacy Organization Gets Underway and Offshoot of Obama’s Grassroots Support Aims Fire at Congress. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
- Welcome to the New Media Campaign Tools of 2012, by friend-of-e.politics Michael Silberman.
- Friendster is at once a thriving success and a robot-ruled ghost planet.
- Why Facebook is good for you .
- How To: Open Up Government Data.
- Departure of RNC’s Top Web Strategist Worries Conservatives.
- Of blogs and bank nationalization.
- Please Don’t Go to Politico! Not all sites are quite comfortable with that whole “linking” thing.
- Is Obama Making Nice With Bush? Curious changes to 43′s bio on the White House Web site.
- [Republican] Leader Boehner Directs Ranking Members to Use Web.
- Gore’s wasting his energy with .eco domain.
- Democrats Ca$h in on Rush.
- What the Heck Is Twitter? It’s not a Google killer, and it’s not a Facebook killer.
- He Who Has Not Hit ‘Send’ May Cast the First Stone.
- A Struggle Over U.S. Cybersecurity.
- Online advocacy in Arizona: Board to decide if student will walk at graduation.
- Bloggers help derail an Obama appointee.
- Book Review: ‘Stealing MySpace: The Battle To Control the Most Popular Website in America. C.f. I Can Has Internet Millions: The company behind lolcats and Failblog tries to turn memes into money.
- Politics and New Media, or “Should I Really Tweetspam Congress?”, via @levjoy.
- Heads Pop Up and Heads Roll: Let’s Keep Track. Following appointees’ fates online.
- Iran’s Drones. Battle bots!
- First the robots, next the damn kids: Student project captures images of Earth from space, using a $100 camera and $1300 balloon.
- Ben Rigby Interviews Gordon Mohr of the Internet Archive @SXSW. The subject: trepanation. The photographer: e.politics.
- A Few Good Tools for Online Distributed Fundraising.
- Facebook Gets New Public Policy Director.
- TXT for (Increased) Success.
- A Small Ride That’s a Big Wheel in Congo — not all vital technology is electronic.
- Stop Whining About Facebook’s Redesign. Nope, not quite done yet.
– cpd
March 30th, 2009
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With Obama campaign staff reporting a “ridiculously” high Return On Investment for list-building search ads and Google giving Grants to nonprofit advocacy groups like a crack dealer handing out freebies in a new territory (and for much the same reason?), contextual/behavioral advertising seems like it’s come to the political world to stay. But most advocacy groups have limited experience with buying, targeting and testing political search ads, and many others are reluctant to even try them out for a variety of reasons ranging from past poor performance from online display ads to pure philosophical discomfort.
Up comes a chance to learn more: on April 10th, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is sponsoring a panel discussion hosted by ClickZ’s Kate Kaye covering the lessons we can learn about “behavioral” advertising (in this case: search and contextual ads, or basically Google Ads) from their use in the 2008 elections. This event was originally scheduled for March but had to be postponed, and in the meantime e.politics has somehow managed to sneak aboard the panel. Should be interesting and informative, and it’s free to boot. Register here.
– cpd
March 29th, 2009
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Vote early! Vote often! Well, at least vote…
Golden Dot Award voting ends tomorrow, March 27, at 5 pm “Beltway” time. Vote now for the 2009 Golden Dot award winners.
Golden Dot Awards recognize achievement in online politics. To be eligible, our nominees must have used the Internet to try to influence the political process (i.e. for an electoral campaign, political party, official ballot, issue campaign, advocacy group, etc.) between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008. Nominees must have campaigned, organized, created political media, or conducted advocacy online.
Winners will be announced on Thursday, April 16 and honored at the 2009 Politics Online Conference (April 20 – 21).
Note that e.politics is not in the running, so I have no dog in this hunt — limit one per customer.
– cpd
March 27th, 2009
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Low has the legal profession fallen — this just in from my old colleague and source for good hip hop JK, who’s currently at NYU law school:
I was walking to class yesterday when I saw one of my friends carrying around your “Online Politics 101″ paper. At first I assumed that he spent his spring break at SXSW and had mistaken your promotional materials for a Crystal Stilts fanzine, but he swore it was assigned reading for his public policy advocacy clinic. Turns out your scribblings on twittering zombie robot armies are influencing the next generation of legal minds. I will now drop out of law school and pray for us all.
Evil Plan Number One in action! They may mock me now, but soon my monsters will rule the world — just wait until the mind-control algorithms take full effect…
– cpd
March 27th, 2009
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Cross-posted on techPresident
A classic observation from the early days of online marketing: a website is NOT a strategy. I.e., when you ask the client what they’re trying to do online, and they reply that they have a website — which is of course just a tool, and is probably not doing them much good if it’s isolated from an actual plan to put it to use.
The Twitter fixation currently sweeping segments of the news media and the political world (particularly on the Republican side) reminds me of those innocent days of the early web. Not to put Twitter down, because it definitely has valuable uses, but it’s just a tool — and if you don’t know WHY you’re using it, you’re probably not going to get much out of it.
(more…)
March 26th, 2009
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A roundup of articles expanding on points in today’s webinar with ReThinkMedia, Staying Relevant in the New Media Landscape. Contact me for more information or for a copy of the Powerpoint.
– cpd
March 26th, 2009
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Guest article! This one comes from an e.politics reader with years of service in the online political world but who prefers to remain anonymous to preserve feelings — and professional relationships. His anecdote contains too much wisdom to keep as secret as his identity.
In a previous life, I worked in a rapidly evolving organization — but one still not maintaining the pace necessary to meet our projections. Within this context, one of our co-founders lassoed a close friend to provide pro bono management consulting services.
We scheduled the obligatory “kickoff meeting” in which the management introduces the consultants, lists their credentials and gives an explanation of the mission of the project that is too broad to have any significant meaning. Picture the Bobs being introduced in Office Space.
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March 26th, 2009
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Just posted on the Politics Mag Campaign Insider blog: the e.politics review of the campaign sites for Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy, running against each other in the upcoming special election to fill the 20th Congressional District seat in New York. Both sites are competently done and give their guy a chance to gather supporters online, but the contrasts between the two show some subtle differences in emphasis and technology. Check it out here.
– cpd
March 25th, 2009
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At a Progressive Communicators of DC lunch today, Mike McCurry made a lot of good points about modern political communications — between the Monica Lewinsky jokes clearly intended to ease what sounded like residual pain from his years as Bill Clinton’s press secretary. Here’s one idea he brought up that I hadn’t really considered before: technology lets us target almost an infinite number of different audience segments with selected messages, but politics demands that we ultimately bring them all together to get something done. From database-driven direct-mail targeting to issue-blog outreach to video-laden Google Ad landing pages, modern online communications is niche-driven — but enacting public policy requires some kind of broad consensus.
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March 24th, 2009
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Whew, that was one hell of a week-and-half — South By Southwest is so overwhelming and immersive that you’re almost glad when it’s over, though the real world feels flat and quiet by comparison. Work is a relief, a familiar groove to slip back into, and the body craves a day that doesn’t end at 3 a.m. It’s a near-complete celebration of creative culture, feeding the brain, ears and eyes to the point that they all need respite by the end. Next up: off to NYC for a Wednesday panel appearance at the Search Engine Strategies conference — time to retire the Converse and t-shirts in favor of a suit and tie (straight from Austin to its near-antithesis).
More articles inspired by SXSW Interactive are on the way, along with the last two installments of the Obama lessons series, but let’s linger for a minute on some highlights from SXSW Music while the songs still echo:
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March 23rd, 2009
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When you’re the director of social media for General Motors, you have a political job whether you expect it or not. At an SXSW panel on the “Digital Tsunami” that brews up around breaking news events, GM’s Christopher Barger demonstrated a complex understanding of how the explosion of voices and channels on the internet has changed the way corporations need to communicate, particularly at a time when GM’s very survival depends on developments in the political world.
Some of his major points:
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March 18th, 2009
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The next time your boss wonders why your company or organization’s blog hasn’t blown to the top of the popularity charts, consider this: running a top-level political blog is a serious logistical undertaking. People often point to Daily Kos as a model for a successful blog, since it’s one of the top destinations in the progressive political web and features an impressive legion of regular contributors. But supporting millions of readers and thousands of pieces of monthly content comes neither cheaply nor easily: in an SXSW Panel on social media marketing yesterday, site founder Markos Moulitsas mentioned that Daily Kos has nine full-time staff, assisted by contractors as needed.
Some employees are writers/editorial staff, others tech and others on the business side, and their care and feeding (along with the site’s) requires a seven-figure budget. Where does the money come from? Almost entirely from ads, which in turn depend on a huge number of page-views and a healthy group of advertisers willing to pay to reach those readers. Many political communicators have come to realize that starting a blog is not a casual act; Daily Kos shows just how big an endeavor one can become.
– cpd
March 16th, 2009
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